'Common sense' oncology summit encourages honest discussions about treatment risks and benefits

A group of oncologists, patients and advocates is meeting in Kingston, Ont., this week to discuss a revolutionary idea in cancer treatment: maybe oncologists should encourage less treatment for patients in order to focus on quality of life and care.

Dr. Christopher Booth, a medical oncologist and health services researcher at Queen’s University and the co-leader of the very first Common Sense Oncology Symposium, believes cancer patients are often given treatments that, in the long run, only offer very small benefits.

“Most of the treatments that we strongly support are the standard treatments: surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and new cancer medicines,” Booth told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday. “But increasingly, some of our new treatments might not even help people live any longer or improve their quality of life. They might shrink tumours on a CAT scan for a couple of months, but that's a very different outcome than what many patients and their families would want.”

Booth said many patients want to have honest conversations and make informed decisions about how they spend their time, especially patients with terminal diagnoses, but often those conversations aren’t happening in oncology medicine.

“We're not proposing we have the answers for what a patient would want,” Booth said. “We just think we need to have a better conversation so that patients have the information they need to make the decision that's best for them.”

Booth described three major problems with how the oncology field currently treats cancer patients in a Queen’s University’s presentation called Research Talks, where researchers at the university give “TED-style talks” using “innovative research” to students, faculty and community members.

The first problem Booth outlined is that people from worse socio-economic groups or poorer countries and regions are more likely to develop “worse cancers with worse outcomes.”

The second is that many cancer treatments do not provide a sufficient “time trade off” for patients, as patients often spend their remaining time undergoing treatments instead of “being with their loved ones or having experiences.”

Lastly, Booth described the astronomical cost some of these cancer treatments can tally up, which affects “both patients and the overall medical system.” For example, he said one drug costs over $100,000 and causes “terrible” side effects and “only improves survival by 10 days.”

The symposium will feature talks with 30 oncologists and patient advocates from 15 different countries.

“We thought it was time to have an open conversation about these things and work with patients to understand how we can best give them the information they need to make the best decisions possible.”

The Canadian Cancer Society says 1.5 million people in Canada “live with or beyond” cancer today.